India has improved in the infrastructure, higher education and training and technological readiness along with ICT but the rampant corruption has bogged down its international competitive ratings, a World Economic Forum report said on Wednesday.

India has improved in the infrastructure, higher education and training and technological readiness along with ICT but the rampant corruption has bogged down its international competitive ratings, a World Economic Forum report said on Wednesday.

The global competitiveness index of the international organization has ranked India as the 40th most competitive economy—slipping one place from last year’s ranking.

India has slipped from the 39th position to 40th while neighbouring China is ranked at 27th.

“India stabilises this year after its big leap forward of the previous two years,” the report said, adding that the score has improved across most pillars of competitiveness. These include infrastructure (66th rank), higher education and training (75) and technological readiness (107), reflecting recent public investments in these areas, it added.

According to the report, India’s performance also improved in ICT (information and communications technologies) indicators, particularly Internet bandwidth per user, mobile phone and broadband subscriptions, and Internet access in schools.

The WEF said the private sector still considers corruption to be the most problematic factor for doing business in India.

In fact, Transparency International recently put India on top of five most corrupt countries in Asia by bribery rates.

In five of the six public services—schools, hospitals, ID documents, police, and utility services—more than half the respondents have had to pay a bribe.

“A big concern for India is the disconnect between its innovative strength (29) and its technological readiness (up 3 to 107): as long as this gap remains large, India will not be able to fully leverage its technological strengths across the wider economy,” it noted.

According to WEF’s Executive Opinion Survey 2017, corruption is the most problematic factor for doing business in India.

The second biggest bottleneck is ‘access to financing’, followed by ‘tax rates’, ‘inadequate supply of infrastructure’, ‘poor work ethics in national labour force’ and ‘inadequately educated work force’, among others.The survey findings are mentioned in the report.